Once Unloved, Medicare's
Prescription-Drug Program
Defies Critics, but Issues Remain

By

David Wessel

Updated Dec. 7, 2006 12:01 a.m. ET

See Corrections & Amplifications item below.

The Medicare prescription-drug benefit, the biggest expansion of a social program since the Great Society of the 1960s, was panned by critics when it was in previews. Now, after a year's run, the elderly audience seems to be applauding, public and private actors are clicking better in the very complex production, and costs are below initial estimates.